A shaver with the cradle shaving head is known in the art, for example, in Japanese Patent Early Publication No. 6-343776 in which the cradle head carrying shaving units is mounted on top of a hand grip and is allowed to tilt about a thickness axis of the hand grip. A motor for driving inner cutters of the shaving units is attached to the lower end of the cradle head, and projects into an upper interior space of the hand grip. Since the motor tilts together with the cradle head, the hand grip is required to give a relatively wide dimension to the upper interior space for accommodating the tilt movement of the motor, thereby necessitating also a wide dimension to the hand grip which is a hindrance to making the shaver compact enough to be comfortably grasped by the user's hand.
Another prior art is disclosed in Japanese Patent Early Publication No. 10-43443 which discloses a like dry shaver with a cradle shaving head. The dry shaver has a hand grip of a reduced width dimension within which the motor is allowed to tilt together with the cradle head. However, the hand grip of the reduced width dimension limits the tilt movement of the motor and therefore of the cradle head, only leaving a relatively narrow angular range in which the cradle head is permitted to tilt with restricted capability of following the contour of the user's skin.
Further, Japanese Patent Early Publication No. 4-269992 discloses a like dry shaver with a cradle shaving head carrying a shaving unit. The cradle shaving head is supported to a hand grip to be capable of tilting about an axis. Also in this prior art, the motor for driving the inner cutter of the shaving unit is carried on the cradle head and projects into an upper part of the hand grip, thereby restricting the angular range of the tilting movement or necessitating unduly wide dimension for the hand grip.
Further, WO 00/38891 discloses a like dry shaver having a cradle shaving head. The cradle head incorporates the motor and is supported on top of a hand grip to be capable of tilting about a tilt axis without causing the motor to interfere with the hand grip, giving a wide range of tilting movement to the cradle head. However, the cradle head incorporating the motor is supported at its upper end to the hand grip to define the tilt axis upwardly of a mass center of the cradle head with respect to a height of the shaver. With this result, the weight or gravitational force acting on the cradle head functions to keep the cradle head to a neutral position when the hand grip is held upright, which is a comfortable operating position as the user is not required to raise ones's elbow and is free from fatigue which would otherwise mounts during an extended shaving operation. That is, as the cradle head tilts about the axis with the shaver being held substantially upright, a counter torque appears to impede the tilt movement, thereby making it not easy to tilt the cradle head to a greater extent, while the user moves the cradle head across the skin with the hand grip being held substantially upright. Therefore, the user has to keep one's elbow raised in order to make the cradle inclined for smooth contact with various face areas of the skin for shaving the face, at the expense of the accumulation of the fatigue.
This is true also for the prior art shaver disclosed in the above mentioned three Japanese Patent Publications. Accordingly, it is desired to provide a dry shaver which is capable of tilting the cradle head easily and largely for smooth shaving contact with the user's skin, while permitting the user to handle the shaver comfortably with a hand grip held substantially upright or without requiring to raise one's elbow to a greater extent.